Well, not for me but maybe for some people...  :P

 

So long story short Sam and I drove back up to the Bay Area Friday night so we could pick up Mandi and Madison.  The motivation, in part, was to go sailing with Kurt again on Saturday. :D  So given this dangling carrot a seven hour drive until 1:30am seems perfectly reasonable.  Sam got some homework, reading, and sleep in and I pulled into Montclair on fumes...  But hey, I got to go sailing again!

 

We had the same forecast as the previous weekend except with higher temps.  While we were prepping the boat Kurt talked of perhaps flying the 80% jib.  We looked around at the glass like waters and figured we could probably get by with the 95% jib.  We suited up, sunscreened up, sailed up and got underway.

 

We tried to sail out of the marina again and that wasn't gonna happen...  So we motored out expecting the big puff to be outside the breakwater.  Once outside the marina we struck the motor and sailed.  Very slowly...  I brought along my new GPS just for kicks.  We kept checking the speed and were getting readings from .5kts to 1.5kts.  Thanks to the tidal current we were going sideways as fast as we were moving forward.

 

Ever so slowly inch by inch and step by step we made way.  In the first hour we might have covered a mile.  Kurt, having spent much of his adult life on this body of water feels the need to go somewhere when he goes out.  Sam and I do not have this compunction yet...  I think the original plan was to maybe head out to The Gate and try to pop under the bridge then take a nice leasurely downwind cruise back to Berkeley.  After a couple hours out I checked the GPS to measure the distance to the bridge.  We were still 7.8 miles away.  Geez, that's a big bay!!!  Sure didn't look that far to my un-calibrated eye.

 

Therefore we just sailed.  We took nice long tacks to stay in The Slot and keep what wind there was.  Then suddenly you could feel it on your face. You could actually hear it build.  In a matter of a few minutes we went to virtually becalmed to 10-15kts wind and great sailing!  It was such a cool experience to be sitting there cooking in the sun and gradually you feel the wind build, you hear the rigging just start to creak, and the boat oh so gently takes on a nice heel.  It was almost like the boat was exclaiming FINALLY!

 

Of course by this time it was far to late in the day to try to beat our way to the bridge, still over six miles away.  So we continued to windward for a while until it seemed time to turn around.  This is the part that caused Kurt some heartache.  He's not an out and back kind sailor...

 

With the freshened breeze we got back to Berkeley faster than we'd really intended.  Since we didn't want to give up any of our sailing pass Kurt suggested we shoot the pier.

 

The Berkeley Pier was built in 1927 to support car transport ferrys to and from San Francisco and Sausalito.  The pier was closed in 1939, two years after the Bay Bridge was completed. Two and a half miles of pier still extends into the bay and has been left to decay, though only the first few hundred yards of it is still open..  A section was cleared of pilings and debris just past the still open portion and boats can pass through here.  This is where we went though.

 

This pier shooting really wasn't all that big of a deal but I did want to make sure I went through cleanly between the concrete pilings...  The gap is only about 50 feet wide and generally the tightest confines I actually sail in are hundreds of yards to miles wide.  Since the passage called for a beam reach it really was a simple thing but it was the first time I actually needed to sail to a very specific point and sail a very specific course.  Even on a simple out and back I am learning.

 

The only other thing that seemed interesting on this sail was when I went forward to strike the jib.  We were bouncing around a bit while I was forward trying to lower the jib.  As I started pulling it down it wanted to go overboard.  I really didn't want this to happen.  I also didn't want to kneel on the sail.  So I'm holding the sail with one hand and pulling it down with the other, there by breaking one of the cardinal rules of sailing - one hand for the boat and one hand for me.  I was giving both hands to the boat and she wanted even more...  At first I wasn't kneeling at all trying to avoid the non-skid in my shorts.  That plan went out the window when the boat, seeing that I wasn't hanging on, tried to toss me overboard.  Finally by kneeling and having both hands multi-task, and trying to move with the groove of the boats motion I got that jib on the desk and secured to the lifelines.

 

I'm not sure but somebody in the cockpit may have been laughing at me.  But I'm not sure...

 

What can I say, the worst day on a sail boat is better than the best day at work, and this was nowhere near a bad day on a boat.  Not even for the jaded old guy...  ;)

 

Ciao,

Seaman Ray

 Last weekend I got to go out on San Francisco Bay from Berkeley Yacht Harbor with my father-in-law.  It was some pretty amazing sailing really.  The forecast was for mostly sunny with winds from the west at 5-15kts.  Well, they got the mostly sunny part down but the winds were just a little more lively than 15kts.  Lets call it 15-20 with gusts to 25...  I also never knew that San Francisco bay actually has waves...

 

To date I've only sailed rental boats that have the mainsail permanantly-ish attached to the mast and jibs in roller furlings.  So the day started as a learning day by choosing the 95% jib then finding the jib clew and attaching the sheets with bowlines.  Then I needed to find the jib tack and attach it to the hook on the bow, and attach the jib halyard to the head feeding the luff into the channel on the forestay.  Yes this was all new and I was diggin it.  Our next step was uncovering the main and attaching the halyard and guiding the luff into the mast.  I did a little house keeping while Kurt attached the outboard then we were off.

 

I think the FIL was trying to give me a work out.  As we left his slip in Berkeley we started tacking to get out of the yacht harbor channel.  It's only about 200 feet wide so we were tacking rapidly back and forth.  I was breathing pretty hard during this part whew...  Once we got out past the jetty we quickly realized the forecast was a bit conservative...  Kurt sent me forward to put in the first reef.  My only reefing experience to this point was once on a Capri 22 in becalmed conditions on San Diego Bay and once on a Catalina 320 in reasonably benign conditions.  This evolution then was pretty interesting for me.  Thankfully Kurt's main comes with the reefing lines already run through the clews and it has a cunningham to make the new tack forward.  So for me it was: lower the main about four feet, haul in the reef line, attach the cunningham and tighten, then re-raise the main.  The reefing went pretty easily despite the bouncing around the boat was doing.  We were regularly getting spray in our faces. Luckily we'd put on foulies before going out. I was also wearing a life jacket, something I never do in San Diego bay...

 

So across the bay we headed.  We crossed "The Slot", an area in the bay directly inland from Golden Gate that gets the worst of the weather coming into the bay.  Half way across it was time to reef again...

 

Once we got closer to Richmond and Sausalito the wind died a bit and we shook out the second reef.  We beat our way to Raccoon Straight between Tiburon and Angel Island.  What an interesting place to sail!  Raccoon Straight is inline with The Gate and gets some odd/interesting/challenging weather and tidal conditions.  We tacked our way through along with a dozen other boats and as we neared the western entrance to the straight there was literally a standing wave, like you see in rivers!  That's some kind of tidal flow!  The winds through here were pretty flukey.

I was on the tiller for most of the passage until we took a good puff right on the beam and heeled over until water was coming in over the cockpit coamings...  I said something to affect of "KURT!!!  Your turn to drive the boat!!!"

 

If we'd had more time we might have tried to beat our way to The Gate, and maybe even pop under the bridge real quick but it was quite obvious that wasn't going to be an easy task.  Besides, it being Mothers Day neither of us wanted to take advantage of our good fortune of even sailing on this day.

We continued up-wind until we were far enough around Angel Island to turn down wind and head back to Berkeley.  Once headed downwind the sailing became extremely comfortable.  We saw some sea lions and even some dolphins in the bay as we made our way east.  Kurt remarked that this was only the second time in four decades of bay sailing that he'd seen dolphins so that was quite a treat!

 

In addition to broad reaching home we had waves coming up our stern that we could surf down regularly.  Pretty sure we exceeded hull speed a few times.

What a fun sail! I really felt lucky to get to go out with Kurt and I really appreciated his patient teaching ways.

 

Ciao,

Seaman Ray